← The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance
The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance
These Plants Turn On 1,100 Healing Genes In 24 Hours (Ancient Biohacks) : 1346
00:56:52
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- [00:00]
Alberto Villoldo
Some of my research was in a declassified CIA document.
- [00:04]
Dave Asprey
We're here to talk about how to literally grow a new brain. And this is something that you've done and you've written your book about how to grow a new brain.
- [00:12]
Alberto Villoldo
I had a dead liver heart full of holes and dead parasites in my brain. I knew I could get a new liver, maybe even a new heart, but it's hard to find a good brain, he said.
- [00:22]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
Today's guest was one of the youngest neuroscience professors in the country until the limits of the microscope hit and he traveled to the Amazon to study how indigenous shamans grew their brains without modern medicine. He later founded the Four Wind Society, now the leading school for energy medicine, and has written over 25 best selling books blending neuroscience and ancient recipes to regenerate a new brain.
- [00:46]
Alberto Villoldo
You live in the Amazon, you've got to be a biologist. Dharmas were the first biologists. So I reverted back to what I learned in the Amazon. We looked at the sacred plants. The sacred plants all turn out to be switch on more than 1100 genes that create health in silence. About 600 genes within 24 hours that create disease.
- [01:07]
Dave Asprey
Are the plants actually hacking us? You're listening to the Human upgrade with Dave Asprey.
- [01:18]
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- [03:35]
Dave Asprey
Hey guys, quick reminder. If you're listening to this on your favorite audio podcast app and you haven't been over to my YouTube channel, check it out. Just search for the human upgrade or find me under Dave Asprey bpr. I post full video versions of every episode and a bunch of other cool content outside the podcast. It's a great way to go deeper into the content and connect with other biohackers like you. So leave a comment for me. Yeah, I'm actually going to read them and poke around while you're there. There is a lot of stuff specifically for you. It really helps and it means a lot to me. Alberto Many, many years ago, I said, you know, I've been down to the jungles in Peru and I had a plant medicine experience before. It was a trend to the point that I didn't really know who to go see. And I asked around at this guest house where I was staying. I'm in my mid-20s, and I said, I'm going to do ayahuasca. And they looked at me and they said, you're white. I said, I know, I'm aware of this, but I've done my homework and I actually really do want to go try this. And they said, oh, but it's for locals only and you'll throw up and it's not fun. It's not. It's not a toy. And I said, I understand. So I met someone and I had an experience that was maybe more than I was ready for at the time. And that was my first introduction to direct shamanic practice. I mean, I'd learned some breath work and I'd done some other things, but this was Very early in my spiritual journey, and years later, after I'd started Bulletproof, I came across your work training people who are from the west in some shamanic practice. And I did the first, I think it was a week long, or maybe 10 days, however long it was, session that you put on with no medicines involved, just really altered states, work, breath work, and fires and all kinds of stuff. And it had a really profound effect on me. And I know this is your second time on the show, but I just wanted to thank you because you've done something to bring this to the west in a way that still honors traditional ways versus just turning a sacrament into a toy. So I just. I appreciate you as a. As a friend and as a teacher, and I'm really happy you come back onto the show.
- [05:57]
Alberto Villoldo
Thank you, Dave. Great to be with you. Yeah, it's been a long time since the ayahuasca was really the. The exploratory phase. And now it's become the touristic, very popular. And the. And what I tell people is, you know, shamanism is not about plant medicine only. You know, Shamas were the first biologists, man. They were, you know, if you live in the Amazon, you've got to be a biologist. That's not like an optional course that you take on your way to an mba. You know, you gotta. You gotta learn about the plants and the plants, how they work. And since there was no writing in the Americas, all of the wisdom was stored in the minds of the elders. So you have to learn how to protect the brains of the elder. So you didn't forget how to make fire or where to go in the hunt or how to make a fish hook. So this was what really fascinated me, is how in protecting the minds of the elders, they discovered that you could study the universe by turning within, and not only by measuring and quantifying what you could see through the telescope.
- [07:01]
Dave Asprey
One of the things I will. I'll never forget, during this really intense seven days with you, you had an army of newbies. We're walking around in the Palm Desert, and you're saying, find a rock, just one that calls out to you. And I might have been a little skeptical at the time, but I'm also willing to learn from people who know way more than I do. So we're walking around, and this isn't the first time that this facility has been used. And one of the guys, I think you'll remember this, who had been the most skeptical there was with his son, and he just thought this was the biggest bunch of crap. And he was so resistant. He found a coyote skull, which shouldn't have been there. There's no way that it wouldn't have been found a dozen times over, given the number of people traipsing around. Do you remember what you said?
- [07:46]
Alberto Villoldo
I don't remember what I said, but I remember saying to myself, well, this guy is in for some big medicine.
- [07:52]
Dave Asprey
Yeah, you did tell him that. And you said, ah, there's a reason you found this. And this is the universe bringing you coyote medicine. You have so much resistance to yourself, not to. To shamanic practice, but just, you know, you are arguing about everything, your relationships here. So you're going to have an even bigger experience than you think. And that was when the guy kind of cracked open to the fact that part of the human existence is deeply spiritual and energetic and you can still be rational. And I just. I remember your talk was so impactful because you're saying it can be both, but you just signed up for the biggest medicine because you're fighting against yourself so hard. And before we get into the specifics about growing a new brain and all, why do people fight against themselves so much?
- [08:39]
Alberto Villoldo
You know, I think they're terrified in discovering that they're much bigger than they believe that they are. And it's, you know, like Nelson Mandela said, it's not your. It's your greatness that you're most terrified about. And I think that logic and reason are fantastic, but they can be used as a shield and as a body armor to protect you from the bigger questions in life.
- [09:03]
Dave Asprey
Yeah, and I was probably the most armored of anyone I know in my 20s. I thought everything was logic and ration. Anything below the neck was useless. And maybe I was a hard learner, but certainly learning with you and some of the hard math and the neurofeedback and the breath work and all that, I just finally ended up to the point where I'm simultaneously entirely irrational and rational. Are you there, too? Are you rational and irrational? Are you just irrational? Do you only live in the spiritual? How does this work?
- [09:35]
Alberto Villoldo
No, no, no. I think you got to lose your mind to come to your senses. That's rule number one. And then you get to a higher mind and, you know, when I give talks to physicists, like I was giving a talk at Lawrence Livermore, and they totally get it. You know, they said, yeah, the invisible world, 95% of reality is dark energy. You know, we can't see it, but we know it's there. And they were open to the my and but the rest of us that are looking at science as a religion and a set of facts instead of a way to explore the mystery of life, then we. Then we really become fanatics in some way and narrow minded, including myself, you know, because I came from a kind of a relatively primitive existence in a third world country. And I thought that everything was medical and everything was rational, and if you couldn't measure it, throw it out the door. And then I started. Then I had my first ayahuasca experience. And I, I also, I also was shown more than I could swallow or digest or even chew. And then I said, okay. At the time, I was on the faculty at San Francisco State University and running a little lab in the biology department called the self regulation laboratory, where we were trying to see if we could create psychosomatic health and the chemicals associated with it, or could we only create disease? Psychosomatic disease. But then the plant medicine blew my mind open and I said, wow, why do we have receptor sites for these substances in our brain? And why is DMT in everything in nature? Grasshoppers and whales and plants.
- [11:19]
Dave Asprey
I can't get high by eating grasshopper tea. Can I just wanted to double check.
- [11:23]
Alberto Villoldo
No, you need to. The amount of grasshoppers you need to eat is just way, way too many.
- [11:29]
Dave Asprey
You know how for Americans who apparently don't understand things like miles and feet, they're like, oh, this is three whale carcasses distance away. And like, the news is always doing dumb things like that. So now we have grasshopper units when it comes to looking at psychedelic function, right?
- [11:45]
Alberto Villoldo
They take leaps. Have you seen a grasshopper leap? They're like the quantum. The quantum leapers.
- [11:50]
Dave Asprey
They're pretty fascinating creatures. And one thing that I love about this different worldview, and of all the people I know, you just do such an elegant job of having one foot on both sides of it is you can go into grasshopper consciousness and you have a different way of looking at bugs and life and systems and all. How long did it take you to learn how to see things that way versus the way you did? Was this like a five year challenge? Was it one night with ayah?
- [12:18]
Alberto Villoldo
No, I think the ayah reinforces things that we come knowing. You know, we come with gifts. Like, there are people that. Musical gifts that I don't have. And, you know, there, there, there are people that have mathematical gifts that I don't. I like math, but I, I don't get it. It's like. But you got to come with a certain gift and curiosity for the that which is the unmeasurable and. And with but enough of a logical mind so you, so you don't become. You don't join a monastery, you know, so that's the. And I think if you have that gift, then you got a restlessness about life, then you go towards the sciences and you want to dive into where. Where's the cutting edge of what we're trying to understand now and what instead of just having more experiments with fruit flies and their sexual behavior, which is not, you know, it's not going to get you a Nobel Prize. So you've got to have to drive the ambition and the curiosity. But there's also something you gotta come with and you gotta be able to focus it in a. You have to have both sides of your brain.
- [13:27]
Dave Asprey
I think you're onto something there. And it's a great segue because we're here to talk about how to literally grow a new brain. And this is something that you've done. I know, because we're friends and you've written your book about how to grow a new brain. So what does that mean?
- [13:46]
Alberto Villoldo
Well, you know, it's. You don't need to understand how to grow a new brain because it's happening all the time. You grow a new brain every 22 days. It's like somebody saying to you, no, you cannot have the new BMW, but you got to stay with the 2002 one. But we're going to replace every component in it. The tires and the carburetor and everything in the fenders and the. But you. Because you cannot grow any new neurons except in the hippocampus where there's stem cells. But the rest, the neurons, you're born with, you d with. But you exchange every component part, the mitochondria, all the organelles, every 22 days. So you cannot do that on potato chips. You know, you got to get the neuronutrients. You got to have the. Understand what goes through the blood bearing barrier, what doesn't. And that's what I learned in the Amazon, is what they understood intuitively. They couldn't explain it. They couldn't talk about NRF2 activity activation and detox processes and how you're missing lithium orotate that everybody should be taking now. But they knew the plants had had it. They knew the. And I wanted to know how they knew that curare, you know, which is what they used to paralyze monkeys that are 100ft up in a tree with a blowgun and then they put it in the palm of your hand. And I asked him, what's this chewing gum you put in my hand? He said, no, that's curare. And I dropped it. It says it only works if you. If it touches your bloodstream and it has seven herbs in it. Go. How did you learn this? And he said, the plants taught us. They didn't say that. They said the plants taught us. Stupid. Like, you don't talk to plants.
- [15:35]
Dave Asprey
So, I mean, what's the language of talking to a plant?
- [15:38]
Alberto Villoldo
You know, the Greeks called it gnosis. Gnosis, the direct knowing. Direct knowing. And we have that skill too, unfortunately. We just refine it to the simply biological. You know, when we were 18, we could go into the bar and tell exactly which were the single people, like in three seconds, right. And the datable ones when the light was dim. So we just put that instinct in the service of reproduction, biology, whatever, sex. But it's there. If we can go back to nature. And what a way that means for you. Go back to nature. Go back to your natural mind, your natural self.
- [16:23]
Dave Asprey
It's kind of funny. Even the hardest core skeptic knows that if you walk down the street and there's some guys standing there that you're just kind of, no. Are they a threat? And it's not because you thought they were a threat. It's because you felt whether they were a threat. And you're usually right. And sometimes you're a little bit wrong. And sometimes you're right, they were a threat, but they didn't do anything right. Other times, guys might look the same, but you just know that that's. It's nothing to worry about. Right. So we know that we have some senses that sometimes work, and they must be trainable.
- [16:55]
Alberto Villoldo
Yeah, it's that same instinct. Absolutely the same instinct. And it's. It's a matter of training it. And a lot of the shamanic training is. Is really about that getting out of your mind, coming to your senses, losing your mind and, you know, without losing your. Without going to pieces internally, emotionally. And they. And part of that training had to do with sitting with what the Buddhists call impermanence, with knowing that you're. That you. That. That we're also the children of death and the children of life. We're going to die and. And not shying away from that. Where you open your heart to yourself to begin with. Accept yourself, accept your mortality. Then you're showing your infinity. The plant medicine does that. It shows you that you continue way beyond this biological. This is like a rental car. You know, you got to return it someday, but you're going to keep going. And that heals the fear. When that heals the fear. That's what I was looking for in the lab. Then you create psychosomatic health because you're not producing the stress molecules. You know, you're not triggering the cortisol and adrenaline in the hippocampus. The learning center center is full of cortisol receptors, so you're not damaging. You can have a new experience. You can fall in love with life and with yourself again.
- [18:16]
Dave Asprey
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- [18:44]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
I actually look forward to taking them.
- [18:46]
Dave Asprey
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- [21:11]
Alberto Villoldo
You mean like graduate school? Like getting a PhD.
- [21:15]
Dave Asprey
Besides graduate school, I'm talking about more like zombie mode. Things eating your brain.
- [21:20]
Alberto Villoldo
Well, you know, I'm an anthropologist. I'm a fellow at the New York Explorers Club and all the anthropologists there that have been, that spend time overseas. Viruses are the big problem. And in any jungle setting in Asia or in Africa or where I. All these places where I've done some work in, and I came back with, you know, there are five kinds of hepatitis. I had all five of them. And I had parasites in my brain, my heart had holes in it and my liver was shot. They told me to get on a liver transplant list and I knew I could get a new liver, but, you know, maybe even a new heart. But it's hard to find a good brain these days. So I, I called David Perlmutter, my friend David, and Mark Hyman, my other friend, and, and I said, hey guys, what am I going to do? You know, but you know, the mutual friends.
- [22:18]
Dave Asprey
Mark's a neighbor, so I know.
- [22:21]
Alberto Villoldo
So yeah. So I decided to go in the body and, and the liver repairs rapidly. But I did the western medicine. I killed the parasites with the drugs. But then I had a dead liver heart full of holes and dead parasites in my brain that didn't want to go out of the blood brain barrier. So how do we. So I reverted back to what I learned in the Amazon, which was how when David Perlman and I were in the Amazon, we looked at the sacred plants. Not the teacher plants. Those are the psychedelics. The sacred plants all turn out to be NRF2 activators. And NRF2 is the body's premier detox pathway. And it's also what will switch broccoli. 5 day old broccoli sprouts sulforaphane, but will switch on more than 1100 genes that create health and silence, about 600 genes within 24 hours that create disease. All of those plants were natural NRF2 activators, which are like the Navy SEALs. You know, the NRF2 protein sits on the cell membr. And the minute you get sulforaphane, for example, even turmeric or curcumin, which is much less bioavailable, then they leave the cell membrane to go into the nucleus of the cell and they start, you know, silencing and switching on the good genes that we want to. So we epigenetically, we're beginning to modify their expression. So that was so impressive. How did they know that these plants were, you know, the epigenetic paroxylans plants? And when you ask the herbalists, they said, they told us it's like ayahuasca. You gotta combine two plants. One of them is an MAO inhibitor so that you don't destroy the dimethyltryptamine, the psychedelic part, it's not destroyed in your gut. It allows absorption of the DMT that comes from the chakruna, the other plant. How did they know that? You know, it's like I would scratch my head and you know, ask Chad GPT. But how the hell did they know this? And, and then one time I was leaving the jungle and, and I was doing kind of a residency, a medical residency there, a shamanic internship. And I had a brand new PhD. I remember, and I was telling this group of elders about the butterfly effect that, you know, the butterfly deflatus wings in Beijing that caused the stroma in the Caribbean. And they said, oh, very good, show us. I go, what do we show you? This is quantum physics. He said, no, no, no, you fly a brand new PhD, you flap, flap your little doctor wings and heal somebody in India. I say, I can't do that. They said, I can. They knew how to work, they knew how to, how to work remotely. You know, there's a lot of science and good articles on remote healing and even the CIA and NAS was doing remote viewing and disabling electronics remotely of the old Soviet Union. And so they, so we're, we're hip to that at kind of government levels, but not at the local practical level, which is where I'm really interested in.
- [25:53]
Dave Asprey
It'S funny as someone who's been on the show, and I'm not going to say who it is because I don't know if she wants me to. She was outed in a thousand page book about remote viewing and the history of it with the CIA, and she doesn't practice it anymore, but she was the most effective remote viewer. And she's like, I'm not working for these guys. And she quit many, many years ago. But I mean, we're friends, we've talked about this. This is real. And the shamans have been doing it forever, right?
- [26:21]
Alberto Villoldo
Totally real. In fact, I just, I just did a literature search a couple of days ago and, and found that some of my research was in a declassified CIA document that they had ended up funding some of my work through a foundation, of course, because they were fascinated by psychedelics long before we were, and by these capabilities of the higher brain, of the neocortex, of the rewiring of the higher brain to have extraordinary human capabilities. But to do that, you'd need certain neuronutrients that were not in our food anymore. You need the tryptophan, you need the serotonin.
- [27:03]
Dave Asprey
Well, you say they're not in our food anymore. I mean, turkey has tryptophan, steak has other minutes.
- [27:09]
Alberto Villoldo
You know, it's interesting because I spent a lot of time in the Southwest and in the. And the Pueblo people in the Southwest were turkey farmers and they were the peaceful people. If you raised turkeys and you got tryptophan, you didn't want to invade your neighbors, you wanted to go hug them, have a good time with them.
- [27:33]
Dave Asprey
Oh, wow. So you're saying we could would like load all the fake vegan food with tryptophan so they would just chill out and stop trying to kill anyone who eats meat?
- [27:41]
Alberto Villoldo
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
- [27:43]
Dave Asprey
You didn't say that.
- [27:44]
Alberto Villoldo
I did, but can I use that? Kinesia. I love it. Because that's the key, you know, a sweet pea today is bred for sweetness and not for tryptophan content. A year, 100 years ago, I had three times the amount. And the blood brain barrier. Let me get a little bit, go a little technical here. Because our gene, we have a hunter gatherer genome, evolved 3 million years ago. A million years ago. And we were really bad hunters. This kind of great white hunter story was invented by guys, you know, we would occasionally find some roadkill and bring it back home and say to the women, look, girls, look what I brought back. Can we have sex now? But we were horrible hunters. So the blood brain barrier prioritizes for transport. The transport System prioritizes the BCAAs, the Leucine, Valine and isovalene, the branched chain amino acids. And it gives less priority to tryptophan, which is abundant in the plant products that are not as abundant today because of farming's tendency to breed for sweetness. So we're getting a lot of the protein we need for protein synthesis in the brain, but we're not getting the tryptophan to be able to. That turns into serotonin, that we need to repair the hippocampus and that we need to turn into melatonin, and that we need to turn into DMT by the pineal gland once we acquire the production of the stress molecules. I know that's quite a trip I took us on, but it's all because of the. The turkey farmers.
- [29:27]
Dave Asprey
I like that, though it comes down to aminos. And who would know that your traditional ancestral foods may really affect societal structures? Are the plants actually hacking us?
- [29:39]
Alberto Villoldo
We're being hacked. No, it's not the plants, it's the viruses.
- [29:42]
Dave Asprey
The viruses. So how does that tie in with Turkey and tryptophan?
- [29:46]
Alberto Villoldo
Well, because the viruses, we consider them our enemies. But 90% of our DNA is fossil record of viruses that we've. Our ancestors lived through, you know, smallpox and Black plague and things like that. But they were the drivers of evolution. You know, we want to vaccinate so that we can. There are too many viruses to create vaccines for. We can't. And vaccines are important. You know, I got to work with Jonas Salk for a little bit when I was a graduate student. Yeah. And. And he did the. Salk developed the Salk vaccine, polio vaccine, and he gave it away for free. And so there's some amazing things that vaccines have done. What a clown.
- [30:28]
Dave Asprey
He gave it away for free. Did he not know that you could have a trillion dollar industry where you force people to buy whatever you want, no liability? Salk doesn't sound that visionary. Alberto, what's going on here?
- [30:37]
Alberto Villoldo
That's when I asked the guy, you know, I asked him when I knew him. I was a young graduate student, he was an old man. And I asked him, don't you miss being a trillionaire? And he said, no, I really wanted to discover the double helix.
- [30:53]
Dave Asprey
He's like, darn it. Watson and Crick beat me. Bastards.
- [30:57]
Alberto Villoldo
Yeah, the bastards. So this is the. And it's going back to. The viruses have been driving evolution, but they're not living or dead. You know, we don't know really what they are, but we know that they're evolutionary drivers. And they either inject themselves to a host, they're parasitic, but they're injecting their DNA, so they're allowing for experimentation, evolutionary experimentation that wouldn't happen. But today. You know, I was listening to Bobby Kennedy a few days ago, he was saying that when his uncle was president, 3% of Americans had chronic diseases. Today, 76% of Americans do. And a lot of the problem we're having is immune. It's immune related. So if we don't have strong immunity, the viruses are going to accelerate evolution in a way that's not going to be pleasant for us.
- [31:53]
Dave Asprey
This is one of the reasons the ocean's full of viruses. You go swimming, they're hacking your DNA. And so anytime you look at anything as good or bad, you're probably being childish. So viruses could be good or bad, depending on. Even vaccines could be good or bad, depending on which one, and your own risk and all that. And. And some people get really mad when I say that. And if you can show me real, unaltered, truthful evidence that there's a vaccine against cardiovascular disease, I'm pretty sure that I'm interested. But I'm not going to believe it unless I know that it's done with clean science. So they'd have to do a lot of convincing. But I'm open to the idea, even if I'm cautious. And so I would just encourage anyone. Don't believe your own bs. How do you avoid believing your own bs Alberto?
- [32:37]
Alberto Villoldo
You mean chocolate doesn't work for that cardiovascular stuff?
- [32:40]
Dave Asprey
I mean, it might help a little bit, but I don't think that a chocolate bar a day is going to keep the heart surgery.
- [32:45]
Alberto Villoldo
No, I do the chocolate chip. I got to do the chocolate chip. I can't do the bars. But chocolate actually is. It's a Mayan word, chocolat. And they used to drink it with spice and anything that has the word atal associated with it. Chocolate is one of the sacred plants. So they're NRF2 activators. Brain food. You know, the fats are amazing. Brain food. But I think that today we have to become our own chief scientist, because you can't tell what's anymore. You got to become your own chief scientist, your own medical doctor, your own, you know, for example, peptides. We have amazing peptides available to us in America, but they cannot be patented. Pharma can't take them over. So there's so much misinformation about them. And they're the most extraordinary tools that if we learn how to work with them and work with somebody that can coach us, they can do wonders. I mean, insulin is a peptide GLP1 agonist. This is ozempic. It turns out to protect you from Alzheimer's and protects your kidneys and you lower your risk of dying from Cardiovascular events by 57%. So we got to really immerse ourselves in the tools that become empowered and not just follow the latest HIP supplement, but understand the systems. What are the systems? How do they work? And not just the molecules and the pathways, which is western medicine, because the planets have multiple pathways and hundreds of molecules and the. But they're synergistic. So we have the wisdom already and we have the tools for accessing it today. You know, I can, I can ask Chad to give me the five botanicals that have the best GLP1 agonist impact and I get them in a minute without having to take a semi glutide or GLP1 peptide. So that's the, the information is available today. The misinformation, unfortunately, is fear driven. And we have plant. You know, we grew up with plants, we evolved with the plants. And they're here, including the psych. It turns out that the best extender of average lifespan in mice is psilocybin. You read that? You read that research?
- [35:20]
Dave Asprey
No, not about life extension in mice. I, I saw life extension when I didn't realize it was in mice. But that's interesting because there's no placebo there. It's just good for them.
- [35:28]
Alberto Villoldo
Yeah, yeah, sure. And they didn't put. They put it no rock and roll music when they gave it to them.
- [35:34]
Dave Asprey
Oh, man. Are you a fan of using psilocybin to grow a new brain? I mean, you wrote a book about that, but it's not really about psilocybin.
- [35:42]
Alberto Villoldo
I wrote a book about growing a new brain. And psilocybin is also serotonin analog. So you find that they all have this indole nucleus and they're binding sites, both ayahuasca, psilocybin, mescaline. They work on psilocybin receptors. On serotonin receptors. So there's something here. And now that the longevity studies and the aging studies on mice and psilocybin are showing that it extends lifespan, it reduces mortality. Like the average mortality may be at 50%, but the psilocybin mice live 30% longer. And it's available. Take a look at the science. And it's. So why did the great spirit create psychedelics that are in every plant and animal in the planet. And we have receptors for. And their serotonin receptors. How can we do that? By producing, manufacturing our own ayahuasca, the brain, the pineal gland, that's its only job. The pituitary gland produces 100 different hormones. The pineal in the higher brain produces only melatonin and methylates serotonin into dimethyltryptamate. So, wow, this is very cool. We didn't know that, you know, 20 years ago.
- [37:18]
Dave Asprey
I remember, I think it was Candace Pert, who's the discoverer, our discoverer of the opiate receptor in humans and wrote this. Interesting.
- [37:27]
Alberto Villoldo
The neuropeptides. Yeah, the neuropeptides.
- [37:29]
Dave Asprey
Yeah, yeah. And she was talking about going down and visiting shamans in South America. And so she's this really hardcore skeptical, western scientific. As you had to be as a woman in science in the 70s and 80s when she was coming up.
- [37:44]
Alberto Villoldo
She didn't get the Nobel Prize. She should have been included in.
- [37:46]
Dave Asprey
You know, I never got to interview her because she passed before I became aware of her work. But when you read her book, she says that we went down, we talked to all these shamans, and I was trying to explain to them about the opiate receptor in the brain. And they all just started laughing and laughing and laughing, and she's like, what's so funny? And they said, you think those things actually exist?
- [38:09]
Alberto Villoldo
Yeah.
- [38:10]
Dave Asprey
Here's the question, though, Alberto, you're a shaman, do they exist?
- [38:13]
Alberto Villoldo
So you're talking about the nature of reality now. What is real, what is not real? And I think that we co create with spirit and that this material reality, tangible reality, is real. But it's only real because you consider itself. If you were to change your ground of beliefs, your presuppositions about the world, the world would mirror that back to you. You become more synchronistic, you would enter a little bit more into the. What we would call the magical world. And not only the world of causality, of cause and effect.
- [38:48]
Dave Asprey
Is that what you had to do to grow a new brain? I mean, was it about taking NRF2 or was this about a mindset or a world set shift in you?
- [38:55]
Alberto Villoldo
They go together. Shamas were biologists to begin with, and they also knew the invisible world. You gotta. They gotta go together. So you gotta have the right biology, gotta have the right molecules, and then you have to understand what your maps of reality are, because the universe is so generous. That'll mirror back to you whatever Presuppositions. You have deep presuppositions about the nature of reality. See, when I had. I don't see private clients anymore, but when I did, I would have people coming into my office with a big stack of diagnoses and labs and cancer results. And I needed to see a golden Buddha walking into my office because if I saw a liver cancer, that's what I was going to find. That's what Heisenberg told us about the electron. Wherever you look for it, that's where you're going to find it. And if I could convince them that they were a living miracle and not a diagnosis, then miracles would begin to happen. Amazing stuff will begin going on, to go on. But you gotta find those core beliefs that have been instilled upon us and then dismantle them.
- [40:12]
Dave Asprey
What percentage of your healing came from food and taking the right supplements or the right plants versus your worldview and your mindset?
- [40:22]
Alberto Villoldo
See, the problem with that question is you're assuming that 100% is the maximum. You know, if we're working with like a 500% gauge, I say that it's about 200 and 200. There's no amount of supplements that are going to override a bad mindset and no amount of mindset that are going to override a really crappy diet.
- [40:42]
Dave Asprey
Wow. So that was maybe the best answer I've ever heard. A question like that, which is an impossible question to answer. And you gotta do both. And it probably depends on the person. If you have a toxic belief system and a good diet, it's going to be 80, 20 in one way versus. So I 100% agree with you.
- [40:59]
Alberto Villoldo
And a month or two later it could shift. That percentage could shift around. Maybe you get into a relationship because we end up marrying the people we need to learn from and grow with in many ways. And you'd say, well, I got to learn these things about who I believe, my own self esteem and who I am and what I deserve. Then you got to do that work and. But you got to clean up your diet too.
- [41:20]
Dave Asprey
I so resonate with that. I look at different times in my life. Certainly mindset's been a thing. And other times where, you know, if you're swallowing a little bit of cyanide every day, wishing that away, you need to be, you know, Jesus level to do that. And I don't know, I'm not there.
- [41:39]
Alberto Villoldo
No, no, no, you can't. You cannot play with mercury, you know, no matter how little the amount is. But the Buddha taught us that Thoughts become things, you become what you think and what the shamas were masters of. They knew how to work with the mechanism of the placebo, which we think is tricking people into that this is a sugar pill. In effect, the placebo works even when the person knows they're getting a placebo or the nocebo, like the studies done in New York on voodoo destination. If somebody thinks that they've been cursed, within two weeks, they get to pick up a major illness. So the mind is all important, but to really create psychosomatic health, which is what my new book is about, you need to access the higher brain. And because that's the brain of quantum physics, of music, of creativity, and not the Neanderthal limbic brain, which lives in fear and scarcity no matter how much you have. And then it gets, then the game gets really interesting.
- [42:42]
Dave Asprey
It gets interesting. It also gets confusing. And in your book, you're talking about spirit with a capital S. What are we really talking about?
- [42:52]
Alberto Villoldo
We're talking about you and I. We're talking. You know, the shaman in the Amazon once told me, you know, Alberto, we didn't come here to grow corn, only we came here to grow gods. And that's the, that's such, such an impetus. I thought we came here to work on our stuff, you know, on our issues, on our mommy, daddy stuff. That's a distraction after a certain time. You came here to become divine and to dream the world into being, create beauty, invent new stuff, create new technologies, create new ventures, start a new company, know, learn how we can participate and with our biology. So this is where we, we break out of this kind of narcissistic, self therapeutic black hole that we end up digging ourselves in sometimes. And we get to play in the game of life, you know, we. We get to invent a coffee that we call danger. Nobody in their right mind would call any product that they invent danger. But it's the only coffee my wife will drink. You know, she and I love it. It's fantastic.
- [44:04]
Dave Asprey
It's hilarious. I didn't thank you. And you're right, everyone thought I was nuts, but it wouldn't be the first time.
- [44:10]
Alberto Villoldo
Yeah, totally. You get to really become, you know, spirit. The word spirit comes from breath. And there's a great meditation that I learned with the shamans that when you inhale, you go to silently. I am. And when you exhale, you go, my breath. I am my breath. So when you take that last breath, that last exhalation, you could go off into the quantum field, into Infinity and have only the I am will be with you. So how do you leave this life consciously? How do you get out of this life alive? That's reveals itself, I think in that higher brain with those neural networks that we can. The meditation will take you there. But it's so damn long.
- [45:02]
Dave Asprey
Yeah, that's the thing. That's why my most recent book exists. There's a lot of ways that are faster than just meditating by itself, but there's value in meditating and some meditations are more valuable than others for certain states. And it's kind of complex. It's like learning how to cook. I go, do you want to cook a steak or did you want to cook some broccoli? Because they're kind of different skill sets, right?
- [45:22]
Alberto Villoldo
Yeah.
- [45:22]
Dave Asprey
Speaking of steak and broccoli, what do you eat?
- [45:25]
Alberto Villoldo
Steak and broccoli together. It's a really great combination.
- [45:29]
Dave Asprey
I knew you were going to say that. I wasn't planning it that way but once I said it I'm like, duh, you know.
- [45:33]
Alberto Villoldo
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, it's great. We've been friends for many years and I get just very playful when we hang out together. And basically the. I think you, you've got to find what your system wants and needs now. Like, you know, I'm in an age where I need more protein in my body and the problem we gravitate a lot to the meat protein is many of us just don't have. Meat is absorbed immediately as soon as it leaves the stomach. Whereas vegetable protein has to go through your GI tract and your gut flora, your biome has to work and if it's not working properly, you're not going to get that protein absorbed. You're better off eating the animal protein. But if you restore your gut flora and their peptides will help you do that. BPC157. Amazing. To help restore the gut and then you don't just take probiotics but you open your probiotic capsule, you rehydrate it in a glass of water before you drink it so it doesn't rehydrate in your stomach and blow up because it's full of acid. So a lot of my diet is plant based. Very, very good carbs, very. No processed carbs except I just had some, some towards some blue tortilla chips this morning. I couldn't help myself. But primarily that. And then your animal products should be, you know, should be really know where they come from because so much marketing right now, grass fed means they're just putting a Lot of grass, truck into a feedlot. And so know where your, your, where your meat, your eggs and, and fish. I think that we grew up by the sea. Our body really resonates to fish. And then at the same time, you got to find out how to keep your mtor, which is your aging clock, your biological clock, but keep that down because if you're eating bacon and burgers and a steak at night, it's going to drive mtor up, you're going to age faster.
- [47:39]
Dave Asprey
I've definitely, if I give you my longevity book, I talked about an excess of amino acids from animal protein, possibly increasing mtor. And for listeners, MTOR causes tissues to grow, which is good for regeneration. But if it's always turned on, it increases cancer risk. And cancer is one of the things that's high on the list of what might take you out if you're not controlling for it.
- [48:01]
Alberto Villoldo
Not only that, but excessive amino acids will turn into fat. You gotta be in the right proportions, right balances, which is where you were going next, I think.
- [48:10]
Dave Asprey
Well, that can happen. But I looked at what raises mtor and you know what raises mtor way more than animal protein? Sugar or carbs. You eat starch, it turns into sugar. Right. So rice or sugar or fruit is going to raise mtor more than beef. So how can you be plant based to control mtor when plants are made out of carbs? I don't understand it, like, not challenge. I'm just like, I used to believe that, but it doesn't seem to be me mechanistically how it works.
- [48:38]
Alberto Villoldo
You know, I think that that Davis Sinclair really upset a lot of people a couple years ago when he came out that he was vegan.
- [48:45]
Dave Asprey
Well, it doesn't work. People go vegan, including me. They get sick.
- [48:48]
Alberto Villoldo
Yeah. And yeah, I think you gotta find out what your body needs, but you gotta really be able to do two things. One is that a lot of the protein we're eating is just going right through us because we're not going into autophagy. Every cell has a recycling bin. You know, your mitochondria dies, it puts it in the recycling bin. The body is designed to recycle. And if you can go into ketosis and go into autophagy, the recyc of these amazing proteins that have already differentiated into liver protein, into liver cells and heart cells, et cetera. And you can absorb your plant protein. You can, you don't have to eat as much meat, but your body will tell you, your body will guide you. And you need to find out what's best for you at this stage in your life, and what do you want to feed your gut so that they can. Because that's where your immune system resides.
- [49:43]
Dave Asprey
It's interesting where I ended up both based on like the energetic intuition, felt sense, and also a lot of science. I'm not full carnivore because I have done that before. We called it carnivore, and I gave myself leaky gut and an egg allergy because I didn't have a lining for my gut after a long time. So I don't think that's the way to do it. But I eat limited plants and ones that digest cleanly and create a lot of plant toxins, and that seems to be there. But I'm also militant about 200 grams animal protein a day because I weigh 200 pounds. And when I do that and I can digest it, I'm 6% body fat and I can eat or not eat. I just like, I am so, well, dare I say, bulletproof when I do that. And so many people I know have tried it and they do lose weight and they put on muscle and it changes. So it's kind of confusing because there's a lot of information out there where, well, it should work. And you make some new research on things like mtor and I think demonizing animal protein is tough because you eat animal protein and you eat some plants. I eat animal protein in various degrees based on our genetics, whatever else, and I think that's where we end up. But not all plants are good and not all animal protein is good.
- [50:55]
Alberto Villoldo
No, I think that you turn it into dogma, it becomes dogma. So you've got to find out what works for you. Read the science and, you know, it's not only about building muscle, but about using muscle. Like I. Every year I still lead an expedition. I go to Peru for a month every year to work with the shamans. And every year I lead an expedition where we camp at 12,000ft and hike up to 14,000. And I'm still doing it. I'm walking up the mountain and you get breathless. You do hypoxic training, I like to call it.
- [51:29]
Dave Asprey
Yep, we do to upgrade labs now.
- [51:32]
Alberto Villoldo
So that's the. The resilience we need to build. Not only strength, we need to build resilience. Immune resilience, spiritual resilience, emotional resilience, physical. At all of these levels, we neglect one of the levels, we neglect the emotional favor of the physical only. I have friends of mine that are just in the gym because they don't want to deal with their dysfunctional marriages.
- [51:54]
Dave Asprey
That's a really powerful statement, Alberto. There are people who self medicate, especially with cardio, but it can also be with weights, where, like, it's just easier to deal with the body than the heart and the mind.
- [52:05]
Alberto Villoldo
Yeah.
- [52:06]
Dave Asprey
With your own growing of a new brain, did you have to take your brain to the gym? Did you have to do weird things to grow it back, to stimulate it?
- [52:13]
Alberto Villoldo
Absolutely, yeah. No, I think that you gotta take your gym, your brain to the gym, and, and not just to the gym. You gotta find some endurance sport, like whether it be jogging or bicycling or swimming. For me, it's swimming. Something that is just going to allow your. Your mind to go into this, the space of. Of everywhere, nowhere, and, and then you got to challenge yourself, pick. Pick up a new language, learn to play an instrument, play Scrabble. You know, I. So my wife and I play Scrabble together. And, and she's amazing because English is the second language for her, but she beats me all the time. But I decided to work with the Scrabble board upside down because I wanted to see new relationships and things. So I play upside down now. So I'm exercising my brain. I'm. You know, we've outsourced a lot of our brain to our digital devices. And when we were kids, we knew everybody's phone number. I don't even know my own phone number now. So you gotta. You gotta take your brain out to a workout and, and you remember that there are four kinds of different. Four different brains, and each one of them works out differently. There's a reptilian brain, brain stem, you know, and breathing practice is the best thing to exercise that brain. For us, breathing is an autonomic function. For dolphins, it isn't. That's why half of the brain sleeps. And a dolphin can commit suicide by holding their breath. We cannot. But we can retrain that brain to not go into panic mode when we do exercises that build up the CO2 in our system, for example, without it triggering panic.
- [53:58]
Dave Asprey
You mean you could just breathe in a paper bag for a little while the way they used to 50 years ago for anxiety?
- [54:03]
Alberto Villoldo
Well, yeah. You know, the breathing works on the basis of CO2 concentration, not oxygen.
- [54:09]
Dave Asprey
Right.
- [54:10]
Alberto Villoldo
When CO2 levels in the blood get to a certain threshold, you begin to hyperventilate and you go into panic. And that's why that breathing meditation is one of many that you find around the world. But if you can teach your body to. If you can hold Your breath. Learn to hold your breath underwater. For example, when I was. That's a big one. I used to hold my breath for two minutes when I was 20, and I was a swimmer and a scuba diver. Now I'm 50 years older, and I can hold my breath for three minutes underwater. But you gotta go through that point where you think you're gonna die. And that's why befriending death and going through that point that triggers all the survival. That's a learning edge. That's amazing. Yeah.
- [55:02]
Dave Asprey
There's something about learning to not fear pain for its own. For its own sake is valuable. In my most recent book, I wrote about bicep, brief, intentional conscious exposure to pain. And this is why, you know, you'll see monks whip themselves, yogis lay on beds of nails. Or you even see in North American indigenous practice, you know, there's the sun dancers. They're piercing themselves and doing some pretty intense stuff. And the idea is that if you're not causing permanent damage, choosing to be in charge of it, even for three minutes of doing something that's uncomfortable and not hard, but uncomfortable, like something actually painful, it changes dopamine sensitivity for the rest of the day. So, like, the monks did it to be better monks. It took less work, less energy, less willpower. What's the shamanic equivalent of choosing pain? I mean, are you snorting frog juice or what's the deal?
- [55:55]
Alberto Villoldo
I was going to say marriage, but that's not.
- [55:58]
Dave Asprey
I didn't see that with Kobe.
- [56:01]
Alberto Villoldo
But I didn't. I don't think that that's the. I'll tell you an exercise that I recommend to my students. You know what I do, What I do today is I train people in energy medicine. I tend to becoming modern shamans, neuro shamans. And so I tell them to, in the middle of winter, to go and take a nice hot shower in the morning and then turn the faucet all the way to cold. But what you do is be just to put your hand on the faucet and don't turn it. Just notice what your body begins to go through. It's already beginning to experience the suffering that's suffering. And then after a few seconds, turn it all the way to cold. And when you turn it all the way to cold, that's pain. And then you learn the difference between suffering and pain. Suffering happens before and after. Pain is what's going on when you got that shot of cold water. And then don't muscle your way through it. Don't willpower your way through It. Feel it. Experience it. Breathe into it. Feel that you're getting blessed by. These are the waters that run deep beneath the earth, that are coming through a waterfall or just a cascade upon you as nature washing. You know, create a really positive story around it. Then you're rewiring the brain, creating new neural networks around what we perceived as. As pain.
- [57:22]
Dave Asprey
So I'm. I'm doing all right, Getting a cold plunge, and I just. I've been meditating on the blood of my enemies. And you're saying that's not how to do it? Kidding. I don't see it on anyone's blood. But, yeah, it's welcoming the sensation rather than fighting it. And then it doesn't hurt anymore. And that's when your dopamine receptor is like, oh, yeah, okay. I don't have to resist discomfort. But it's different. You see, some people, 45 minutes a day, every day, you gotta ruck while you're walking on ground up glass. And it doesn't take that much time. And it's about intensity, and it's about your state during the intensity versus grit, which is also valuable. Grit is important, but grit depletes willpower, and I'm talking about giving you more willpower so you could have more grit later if you need it.
- [58:06]
Alberto Villoldo
Yeah. And grit frequently will override systems instead of enhancing the systems that you want to enhance. Being able to sit with the uncomfortable, even at the emotional level, we're talking about the physical level, but at the emotional, we call that Jaguar medicine. At the level of jaguar, you're going to sit with uncomfortable feelings. Your partner's saying something that you want to hide from. You know, we guys talk about our feelings for about three minutes and not three hours.
- [58:34]
Dave Asprey
So Three minutes of pain I was talking about. I'm with you.
- [58:37]
Alberto Villoldo
Yeah. Yeah. So you're sitting with the uncomfortable and breathing into it and not trying to hide from it and not trying to deflect it and just simply being with it. And it's amazing how quickly this energy dissipates of anger or fear, resentment towards someone, towards usually somebody you love dearly. And then you got to do it at a higher level, which is the kind of the spiritual level. What is your mission? What are you coming here to do? Are you coming to what's driving you? What do you wake up in the morning to? And there you got to ask the three questions that every spiritual tradition passes, which are, who am I? Where do I come from? And where am I going?
- [59:28]
Dave Asprey
Do you have answers to those for you?
- [59:30]
Alberto Villoldo
Yeah. Yeah, they change periodically.
- [59:33]
Dave Asprey
So who are you?
- [59:34]
Alberto Villoldo
Well, you know, the other day I woke up in the morning with a question. I said, who am I? I'm just a piece of crap, you know? Then I said, well, maybe I could become fertilizer for something I wasn't. You know, maybe I could nurture something or someone. And you got. Yeah, I spend time with the questions is, what will get you on a quest? The answer frequently preempts and avoids the quest. The quest is a journey. So that's where the questions take you. The answers will take you into. Okay, I got that covered. Been there, done that.
- [60:11]
Dave Asprey
So fascinating. Alberto, thanks for your new Grow A New Brain book and for just sharing this very unique but meaningful and scientific perspective. It's this cool blend of your mindset and things like NRF2 and CERT and these other longevity compounds that we talk about on the show. So you've blended them in a new and unique way that I think only you could do, given that you're the Western guy who went to the jungle and stayed for a long time when you couldn't find the drugs you wanted. So you have this amazing story of your life and this is a masterful work. And thanks for coming back on the show and I cannot wait to hang out with you in Santa Fe again.
- [60:49]
Alberto Villoldo
Thank you, Dave. Looking forward to seeing you as well. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.
- [60:53]
Dave Asprey
Guys, go buy Grow a New Brain by Alberto Viotto. If you'd like to get that perspective on, well, science and spirit, they can both coexist. In fact, I dare you to do one without the other and see how well it works. See you on the next episode. See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.
- [61:15]
Podcast Disclaimer Narrator
A Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept information responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.